How PlanetoftheApes’ Andy Serkis Will Conquer Hollywood

Andy Serkis on the set of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. David James/20th Century Fox

Andy Serkis is on a quest. He hasn’t said so outright, but it’s true. He’s on a mission to become a whole new breed of Hollywood power player, a multi-hyphenate like never before: performance-capture-actor-director-studio-honcho. Or something like that.

Serkis, who started out as a stage and TV actor before becoming known for his portrayal of Gollum in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films, is about to prove just how nuanced and powerful a motion-capture performance can be. As Caesar in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, out Friday, he’s playing a far more complex and intense version of his character from Rise of the Planet of the Apes—and this time he’s the primary focus of the film. Yet, he pulls it off so masterfully that it may be hard to ignore him come Oscar season.

“He is one of the best actors I’ve ever worked with,” says Dawn director Matt Reeves. “This guy is amazing. People ask me if there should be a different [awards] category for mo-cap performance, and the answer is ‘absolutely not.’ Because there’s no difference between the way I dealt with him and the way I dealt with Gary Oldman or Jason Clarke or Keri Russell.”

And Dawn is just the beginning. In addition to (presumably) being in the next Planet of the Apes flick Reeves is set to direct, Serkis is also slated to appear in J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: Episode VII and has an unnamed-but-not-Thanos role in Avengers: Age of Ultron (he’s also been helping Mark Ruffalo perfect his Hulk act). After that, Serkis is on the hook to direct adaptations of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book and George Orwell’s Animal Farm in conjunction with his performance-capture studio, The Imaginarium. WIRED sat down with Serkis in San Francisco to ask him about the many ways he’s conquering Hollywood.

Mastering Apes. And Gollum. And Kong.

Even though he started out as a traditional thespian, Serkis made his name with performance-capture roles in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films and King Kong. Since then, he’s become the go-to guy when a director needs someone to act out a non-human part. Reeves, who picked up the Apes franchise from Rise director Rupert Wyatt, says it was a “big relief” to go into his first performance-capture movie with Serkis once he “realized that the reason Caesar was so amazing was that Andy was so amazing.”

Andy Serkis. Ariel Zambelich/WIREDFor Serkis, mastering the technique comes from a very well-honed method. This is particularly true for his portrayal of Caesar: “Most people think you start from the ape perspective, but I’ve always played Caesar as a human in ape skin. He’s very much an outsider. Really, Caesar is all about the conflict, about his lack of identity. As an adult male who has led his species to freedom, he is now trying to teach them—the tenets of belief he’s trying to pass on are not just purely ape beliefs, they’re a combination of human and ape beliefs. So it is ultimately a dance—between anthropomorphizing him and making him more human, and keeping him ape.”

Giving Oscar-Worthy Performances

The thing that’s most striking about Serkis’ Caesar in Dawn is that he is, essentially, the leading man. (Yes, we know: leading ape.) Unlike previous characters like Gollum, Caesar has as much (if not more) screen-time than his co-stars and does a lot of the dramatic heavy lifting. He could be an Oscar contender—except the Academy seems not to know quite how to handle performance-capture. Is it an acting award? Or a visual effects one (in which case Weta Digital would be nominated for animating Serkis’ performance)? Or should there be a whole new category? “It’s a long-standing debate, really, but I’ve always held that there shouldn’t be a separate category,” Serkis says. “This is acting, and the acting part of it is what is authoring the performance on set. Then, of course, there’s visual effects—the rendering and the artistry and the animation that goes on top to take our performances and put them [on screen]. That’s a visual effects category. So I don’t think blending them makes any sense whatsoever.”

Winning Spots in Upcoming Star Wars Flicks

Reeves isn’t sure if he’s directly responsible for getting his friend J.J. Abrams to hire Serkis for Star Wars: Episode VII, but he did show Abrams some early footage of Serkis in action and “he said to me, ‘I’m not kidding when I tell you I think that’s one of the best performances I’ve ever seen.'” And now, he’s Episode VII. So who is he playing? “I [can’t say] not a tiny, weenie bit or I’ll be taken to a galaxy far away and beaten up with a lightsaber,” Serkis says. “But I know that J.J.’s aesthetic and the way that he wants to shoot this movie is absolutely phenomenal.”

Move Into Directing

It’s almost a cliché when actors are say, “Well, I’d really like to direct.” But Serkis isn’t just saying it; he’s doing it. He’s been Jackson’s second unit director on The Hobbit films and has some directing gigs lined up with his London studio, The Imaginarium. “I’ve been heading in this direction for some time,” he says. “In the last three years I’ve been moving very much towards helming and telling stories, as well as acting in them.”

Make a Jungle Book Movie…

If there’s one property that’s perfect for Serkis’ talents at bringing animals to life, it’s a live-action adaptation of The Jungle Book. The first thing on Serkis’ directing plate, it’s in early pre-production and, Serkis says, “It’s very close to Rudyard Kipling’s original works. It’s a lot darker. If you know the books they’re a lot darker than the 1967 Disney animation version of it.” Serkis himself won’t be getting in a mo-cap suit for the film, but he does tease that “the cast of animal characters are designed in a particular way, which I don’t want to go into too much at the moment, but the designs are really exceptional.”

…Or Animal Farm

Serkis was already working on an adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm when Warner Bros. asked him to do The Jungle Book—making the Kipling adaptation his priority. But he’s still very excited to get back to the Farm. “We’re still evolving the script,” he says, adding that his adaptation will be just as dark as its source material. “We can’t back off of that, that’s germane to the book and what we want to do. However, we are making it from the perspective of if Orwell were writing Animal Farm today, what would his political targets be about. So we’re moving it away from the Stalinist metaphor towards the culture of greed. It’s kind of Wolf of Wall Street for kids.”

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